The present disclosure relates generally to analog beamforming, and more particularly to systems and methods analog beamforming for direct radiating phased array antennas.
Communications systems, such as satellites, sometimes use multi-beam antennas, such as phased array antennas. Phase array antennas typically include multiple radiating elements, element and signal control circuits, a signal distribution network, a power supply, and a mechanical support structure. Integration of these components can be time-consuming, can be weight-intensive (heavy), and can occupy excessive space.
Some known multi-beam phased array antenna systems include multiple RF inputs, which are referred to as elements. Each element has a single input antenna to capture or radiate RF energy followed by an amplifier. The received input signal is divided into N signals that correspond to an N number of resulting beams after amplification. After division, a beamformer applies amplitude and phase weighting to each channel of each element. For an array of M elements and N beams, there are M times N beamforming paths. The signal energy from each beam and each element is combined in a power combiner, which has an N number of layers. For M elements and N beams, a quantity of N, M-to-one combiners are required.
The large number of phase shifters, summers, multipliers and related components used in some known systems results in a significantly heavy and large communication system. Moreover, the complexity of such systems often results in complex assembly and interconnection requirements.